The Kiss of Death

Life in urban areas is not much better for Aymara, Quechua, and Guarani Indians who go from being independent agriculturalists to becoming dependent and low-paid jornaleros (hired workers). Many are not even that lucky—unemployment in Bolivia is at 20 percent and rising. Bolivia is a poor and unhealthy country.

Transported pathogens have a distinct advantage with the migration of people in generally being able to colonize and reproduce in new territories. Seasonal migration can lead to a biotic exchange of pathogens between regions, exposing populations to diseases from many regions. In other words, Chagas’ disease, AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria accompany these movements and spread back and forth from home territories to colonized or work areas. Globalization brings colonization not only of humans but of insects, parasites, and viruses. Chagas’ disease in Bolivia provides a microcosmic illustration of what is happening on a global scale.

Increased Productivity

Chagas’ disease will likely decrease to the degree that productivity is increased among peasants in Bolivia. This is an axiom seldom considered by health workers, however. Nearly half the population of Bolivia is involved in small-scale agricultural production of various species of vegetables, fruits, and grains; together, they produce large quantities of produce. Small-scale production is a feasible economic alternative along the valleys and mountainsides of the Andes. Large-scale farming has not been economically feasible in many of these regions.

Productivity can be increased by utilizing the capacity of peasants to produce on a small scale. Small farm and cottage industries are the basic productive units in Bolivia. Bolivia’s cities are being fed to a large extent by market women who sell foods and produce from sidewalk stalls and markets. There is an economic system involving planter, harvester, trucker, and vendor, these roles frequently being filled by relatives and members of the household. Productive units are the family, relatives, and community; they function on small scalessales are small and profits are little. Combined, however, these smaller units have considerable economic leverage and resources. Their economy is held together by religious fiestas, reciprocal exchange, and community bonds. A similar situation is found in the production of goods. Cottage industries produce clothes, foods, various goods, and jewelry. Bolivia has been called the land of free enterprise.

This productivity of rural and urban peoples is the basis for economic development in Bolivia. Small-scale productivity can drive a country’s economy if it is used to produce specialty goods that cannot be found elsewhere. Bolivia’s farms and cottage industries produce items in demand by many countries, such as caniwa and quinua (France imported 150,000 tons of quinua in 1996). Peasants farm plots on mountainsides too steep for plows in order to produce these high-protein native cereals. Chifleras (women herbal vendors) in Oruro sell $1 million worth of medicinal plants throughout the world. A naturalist and a chemist in La Paz export herbal medicines to other parts of the world. They work with peasants in many communities who grow the herbs in gardens, providing them with seeds, medicine to sell, and profits. The two also teach the peasants about the prevention of Chagas’ disease.

Politicians frequently overlook the importance of smaller productive units in the economic development of Bolivia. Small-scale producers need less credit, generally amounts from $500 to $1,000, with annual interest rates below 13 percent. Presently many peasants cannot get loans; for those who can, interest rates often are so high (up to 50 percent) that many cannot repay them and are kept in debt peonage. Farmers need credit to maintain operations during an unproductive year as well as to buy tools, improve seed crops, and purchase livestock. Their children need school supplies and clothing. Some sell their produce in the cities; but they are unable to do this at municipal markets without licenses (RUCs), which are expensive, so they end up selling their goods on the streets. One credit union in Sucre provides farmers with credit so they can purchase licenses and sell at markets, where they have increased sales in a shorter amount of time. Community members individually took out loans to jointly buy a truck in which they could transport their produce to market without having to sell it to a middle-man trucker who formerly made most of the profit.

Six neighboring families in the Tomatita barrio of Tarija co-signed for one other as guarantors to repay the loan if another fails. Individual families have then invested in production: one woman purchased a refrigerator and a television set for her household store and lounge to better serve neighborhood clientele. She makes more money than her carpenter husband, who is frequently unemployed.

An example on a larger scale: three families took out separate loans to purchase a taxi for U.S. $3,000, which they operate between them. The taxi’s monthly income is U.S. $400. Half is budgeted for expenses, so that within two years the car will be paid for, and the owners plan to buy other taxis until every participating family has one.

Cooperatives have been mentioned a number of times as very adaptable to Andean economics. Cooperatives fit into concepts of aynisina (labor exchange), turqasina, and the fiesta system. Cooperatives add an institutional and economic framework that fits into the formal economy of Bolivia. Housing cooperatives have been very successful in Puno and Lima, Peru, with more than 5,000 houses being built. The housing cooperative in San Lorenzo has enabled more than sixty families to build homes. These and other cooperatives have also served to provide loans for capital investment in the production of goods.

Cooperatives, credit unions, neighborhood associations, and the new “Laws of Popular Participation” provide Bolivians with ways to increase production. These measures are better solutions for rural peasants than is large-scale industrial farming, which takes the land away from the peasants and reduces them to migrant workers.

Land Holdings

Productivity is linked to land holdings, which present longstanding problems for peasants. Like Chagas’ disease, the issue is environmentally and historically complex, with no easy solution. Presently, small-scale production has become even smaller because land holdings are being divided into smaller plots, going from the minifundio to the surcofundio (furrow farm). After the agrarian reform of 1954, many land holdings went from the latifundio (hacienda) to plots of several acres, allotted to each peasant family who worked as peons on the hacienda. These three-acre plots then gradually decreased as the land was subdivided to provide for offspring of the landholders. In the eastern lowlands of Bolivia there still exist pre-agrarian reform conditions of pongeaje (peonage), where native peoples have to work for free for owners of large land estates. Until 1960, Chiquitano Indians were held as slaves in some lowland areas.

In contrast, members of free communities continued to hold land in common, and every year leaders allotted parcels to households according to their needs. This long-existing pattern of communal land distribution has never been very popular with Western reformists, many of whom equated it with communism and socialism. Eventually the passage of Las Leyes de Participacion Popular in 1994 required that members of free communities register their land as private property, with the provision that, if they don’t, this land will revert to the municipalities to be sold. This created a traumatic situation for many peasants who were unsure of how to divide the land and under which families to register it. Certain communities refused to declare their land as private property and are vigorously fighting confiscation. Pablo Regalsky, director of CENDA, has supported their endeavors with notable success. Peasant unions have united in this endeavor, which has solidified Aymara and Quechua Indians throughout Bolivia in a common cause. As a result, peasants have entered the political arena with notable success, electing an Aymara speaker as vice-president in 1994. Since his victory, however, he has done little to assist them.

According to the agrarian reform laws of 1954, members of free communities and individual peasant property owners are not required to pay taxes if they work the land. Individuals with large land holdings are required to pay taxes if the land is productive. To avoid paying taxes, some large land owners leave land fallow,